Electronic mapping

Inspired by this month's CTC Cycle mag I have had a brief look at
electronic maps. The mag recommended Anquet (www.anquet.co.uk) but I
couldn't get the demo 3-D imaging to work using any combinations of PCs
and DirectX drivers that I have access to. I also found Memory Map
(www.memory-map.co.uk) which does work, has a very nifty route profile
feature but which seemed less good than Anquet for setting up bendy road
routes.

Anyone able to offer practical experience of using these or any other
equivalent products?

Peter

[Copied direct to email as I'm not sure my news is going anywhere at
present]

On Mon, 07 Jun 2004 13:14:09 +0100, Peter Amey
wrote:

Inspired by this month's CTC Cycle mag I have had a brief look at
electronic maps. The mag recommended Anquet (www.anquet.co.uk) but I
couldn't get the demo 3-D imaging to work using any combinations of PCs
and DirectX drivers that I have access to. I also found Memory Map
(www.memory-map.co.uk) which does work, has a very nifty route profile
feature but which seemed less good than Anquet for setting up bendy road
routes.

Anyone able to offer practical experience of using these or any other
equivalent products?

Peter,

I use Memory Map. I got a single region non-GPS map a good few years ago
and earlier this year took advantage of an upgrade deal to get the whole
of Central UK with GPS for a fairly low price.

Memory Map now has two ways of generating routes, Tracks and Routes.
Routes involve a series of way points connected together and they can be
fiddly for wiggly routes. Tracks are essentially drawn freehand and with a
steady hand quit complex routes can be drawn quickly. You can convert
between the two. The 3D imaging works but is limited to a fairly small
section of the route. It's fun but a bit gimmicky. The route profiles are
excellent for cycling except I seem to have a glitch somewhere as Durham
is at sea level and becomes abruptly so just outside Durham! I don't
upload to a GPS but I have occasionally downloaded recorded routes to
Memory map and I found it straightforward.

I don't like MM's pricing, each CD has the program on it as well as the
relevant data set so to add new regions you pay the full asking price
rather than some sort of data upgrade price. They would argue that this is
because of the OS licensing costs. Probably true to some extent but still
not satisfactory.

They are just starting to add 25:000 maps but only at National Park level,
and they are proportionately more expensive though probably not so vital
for cycling.

Printouts are straightfoward. I tend to do a series to scale on A4 for
longer routes. I do hide the tracks when printing though as they abscure
map detail, which is a shame. A nice option would be for the tracks and
routes to be printed as transparent highlighter colours---not sure if
other packages do this.

I have no experience with Anquet.

Which ever you go for buy as much map as you can afford unless you only
need a small area.

Cheers,

Colin

"Colin Blackburn" wrote in message
news
[Copied direct to email as I'm not sure my news is going anywhere at
present]

On Mon, 07 Jun 2004 13:14:09 +0100, Peter Amey
wrote:

Inspired by this month's CTC Cycle mag I have had a brief look at
electronic maps. The mag recommended Anquet (www.anquet.co.uk) but I
couldn't get the demo 3-D imaging to work using any combinations of PCs
and DirectX drivers that I have access to. I also found Memory Map
(www.memory-map.co.uk) which does work, has a very nifty route profile
feature but which seemed less good than Anquet for setting up bendy road
routes.

Anyone able to offer practical experience of using these or any other
equivalent products?

Peter,

I use Memory Map. I got a single region non-GPS map a good few years ago
and earlier this year took advantage of an upgrade deal to get the whole
of Central UK with GPS for a fairly low price.

Memory Map now has two ways of generating routes, Tracks and Routes.
Routes involve a series of way points connected together and they can be
fiddly for wiggly routes. Tracks are essentially drawn freehand and with a
steady hand quit complex routes can be drawn quickly. You can convert
between the two. The 3D imaging works but is limited to a fairly small
section of the route. It's fun but a bit gimmicky. The route profiles are
excellent for cycling except I seem to have a glitch somewhere as Durham
is at sea level and becomes abruptly so just outside Durham! I don't
upload to a GPS but I have occasionally downloaded recorded routes to
Memory map and I found it straightforward.

I don't like MM's pricing, each CD has the program on it as well as the
relevant data set so to add new regions you pay the full asking price
rather than some sort of data upgrade price. They would argue that this is
because of the OS licensing costs. Probably true to some extent but still
not satisfactory.

They are just starting to add 25:000 maps but only at National Park level,
and they are proportionately more expensive though probably not so vital
for cycling.

Printouts are straightfoward. I tend to do a series to scale on A4 for
longer routes. I do hide the tracks when printing though as they abscure
map detail, which is a shame. A nice option would be for the tracks and
routes to be printed as transparent highlighter colours---not sure if
other packages do this.

Anquet doesn't, Tracklogs does

Which ever you go for buy as much map as you can afford unless you only
need a small area.

Agreed
Russ

Russ wrote:
Anquet is good but tracklogs is better www.tracklogs.co.uk Andy, the
developer and his wife run it as a family business are very approachable and
Andy is a really nice guy and a top cyclist - doing transalp this year.

I have both as full versions, the 3D mapping is great to play with, routes
in the lakes / peaks etc never looked so intimidating :-)

Memory map seemed more expensive and less features when I looked a few years
ago

Russ


Thanks for the tip. I have just tried the Tracklogs demo and I think it
might be the best of the 3 I have looked at so far.

Peter

Colin Blackburn wrote:

I use Memory Map. I got a single region non-GPS map a good few years ago
and earlier this year took advantage of an upgrade deal to get the whole
of Central UK with GPS for a fairly low price.


I bought some of the early Memory Maps where you had to manually link all the
tiles together. A year later they bought out an upgraded version with height
profiles and auto tiling etc. I wrote to customer support to ask if there
were any upgrade deals for existing customers. They didn't even bother to
reply.

Tony

On Tue, 8 Jun 2004 18:01:58 +0100, Tony Raven
wrote:

I bought some of the early Memory Maps where you had to manually link
all the
tiles together. A year later they bought out an upgraded version with
height
profiles and auto tiling etc. I wrote to customer support to ask if
there
were any upgrade deals for existing customers. They didn't even bother
to
reply.

Same here. Terrible customer service. However I noticed, by chance, an
upgrade offer on their website. It was past the closure date for the offer
but the online ordering system accepted my details and charged me the
right (discounted) price. If it hadn't have been for that chance I'd have
probably looked elsewhere.

Colin

Peter Amey writes:

Inspired by this month's CTC Cycle mag I have had a brief look at
electronic maps. The mag recommended Anquet (www.anquet.co.uk) but I
couldn't get the demo 3-D imaging to work using any combinations of
PCs and DirectX drivers that I have access to. I also found Memory
Map (www.memory-map.co.uk) which does work, has a very nifty route
profile feature but which seemed less good than Anquet for setting up
bendy road routes.

Anyone able to offer practical experience of using these or any other
equivalent products?


I have no experience of this stuff but I've been thinking about buying
a gps gizmo recently and have also been looking at mapping software.

Nobody has yet (as far as I've noticed) mention fugawi
(www.fugawi.com). I don't know how it compares with these others, but
it's something else to consider.

Paul Rudin wrote:
[snip]

Nobody has yet (as far as I've noticed) mention fugawi
(www.fugawi.com). I don't know how it compares with these others, but
it's something else to consider.

I am afraid to say I immediately read this company name in the sense of
"where the fugawi?" and a tea spillage moment as a result :-)

Peter

Paul Rudin wrote:
Nobody has yet (as far as I've noticed) mention fugawi
(www.fugawi.com). I don't know how it compares with these others, but
it's something else to consider.

I have had Fugawi for a few months now; after a spot of research I chose
this one because it came with the most map for the money. IIRC Anquet
came with smaller regions and TrackLogs came with little more than
individual counties; I would have needed about four of them to cover
just local rides around here, whereas with Fugawi £45 gets you the
entire width of Britain up to just north of Worcester, which I think is
excellent.

The only major downside I've run into is that the route editing features
are rubbish; to add a new point you have to export the route to a text
file, copy some points in a text editor, re-import the file and move the
new points to where you want them.

It doesn't have a 3D mode, although from what I saw of the Anquet one it
was little more than a cheap gimmick anyway, it looked very much an
afterthought. It does have elevation data and route profiles, which is
useful. A cumulative distance field on routes and tracks would have been
useful too, but that's a pretty minor thing.

I haven't tried TrackLogs; the lack of a demo version and small maps
made me ignore it pretty quickly. I would like to see what TrackLogs is
like, but right now if I had to choose one over again I think I'd still
go with Fugawi.

Phil
--
"Cattle Prods solve most of life's little problems."

"Paul Rudin" wrote in message
...
Peter Amey writes:

Inspired by this month's CTC Cycle mag I have had a brief look at
electronic maps. The mag recommended Anquet (www.anquet.co.uk) but I
couldn't get the demo 3-D imaging to work using any combinations of
PCs and DirectX drivers that I have access to. I also found Memory
Map (www.memory-map.co.uk) which does work, has a very nifty route
profile feature but which seemed less good than Anquet for setting up
bendy road routes.

Anyone able to offer practical experience of using these or any other
equivalent products?


I have no experience of this stuff but I've been thinking about buying
a gps gizmo recently and have also been looking at mapping software.

Nobody has yet (as far as I've noticed) mention fugawi
(www.fugawi.com). I don't know how it compares with these others, but
it's something else to consider.

It's been around a lot longer than the others and was something I looked at
(but discounted) 5 or 6 years ago when I first got into GPS stuff. Was a
decent enough program then but doesn't appear to have even height data for
OS maps let alone 3D mapping. I'd go for one of the UK based products with
the added functionality if it was me.

Russ